Help required.....our song on radio sounds distorted?

octatonic

andy_k said:

Mastering to -11LUFS seems a little hot to me, but it is a competitive market place out there, try running it through Loudness penalty website to see what the streamers will do to it.
I am not familiar with the diagnostic software shown here, but I would try it through Audacity just for a second opinion.
It seems strange that it clips in so many places. Is it possible they are reaching peak and are not overs?
I know we should allow some headroom for conversion to mp3, but that is not the case here, I leave my mixes at -.3 before conversion, which does clip occasionally.

I've now done this.

01 Featherbed Landing (MASTER).wav

• YouTube: -3.8

• Spotify: -4.7

• TIDAL: -3.8

• Pandora: -4.3

• iTunes: -5

You ideally want a loudness penalty not over -2.0.

These values tell me that the track has been mastered a tad too hot for streaming- but that is an opinion, nothing more. I'd have a chat with the mastering engineer.

Yes, -11LUFS is a little hot- -14LUFS being more typical for streaming.
Incidentally, I shoot for -0.6 for my mixes before it gets sent to mastering.

VisLM is an industry standard loudness metering tool but it is probably more popular in audio post than audio mixing.
https://nugenaudio.com/vislm

spark240

err...Ok...so I just noticed something in Petes emails....

This includes individual master WAVS (iTunes/Spotify approved) plus high resolution MP3's for social media and radio. 

Should we only be using the Mp3 version for radio ?

octatonic

Cirrus said:

Guys am I going mad here?

It's not distorting like *that* on the radio broadcast because of the volume it was mastered at. The master doesn't sound like the broadcast, regardless of the volume difference.

It might be.
The results from the loudness penalty website (I used https://www.loudnesspenalty.com btw) indicates that all the major streaming sites would normalise the loudness down by an average of -3.8dB.
Once it is sent to the streaming sites it is out of your hands.

This is all to be discussed with the mastering engineer though.

steamabacus

spark240 said:

So do you think that mainstream established producers do a different mix for streaming than they would for radio play?....or is this done at Mastering stage ?        

I read a Sound on Sound article a few years back that said, at that mainstream level, mastering engineers are increasingly asking for full stems of the track rather than just a stereo master precisely so that they can subtly tweak things for different formats/usages.

A search of the SoS archives might uncover the article - I'm afraid I can't remember any more details.

octatonic

spark240 said:

Ok guys questions !....

The broadcast was aired last night on Total radio UK...based in the UK I believe....I think the US folks get is at Total radio .org.

So I recorded the broadcast by just setting my DAW input to channels 16/17 which is the default stereo from the input from my Mac...17/18 are set flat with no EQ or suchlike.as far as I know, there was definitely no clipping at this point as I kept the signal moderate.

My point is that no matter what volume it is, I can gear the overdriven sound mostly in the music rather than the vocals...and its not just me either,...the male vocalist has a small studio and he's experiencing the same thing in Dublin

I cant profess to understand the LUFS stuff.....so I can't comment on that..

Regards my internet ...Im on BT infinity plus @ around 50mbs

I already contacted Pete Maher about it first time round...this was his comments....happy to ask again....hes very approachable.

Hi Tim, radio compression can be harsh depending on the station but in regards to your master it is technically fine. I tested it through standard radio compression in mono and it sounded good. Obviously not as good or full depth as the WAV master but still dynamic and clear. There's zero distortion/saturation in the master so whatever you heard wasn't related to the sonics of the track. It's worth noting that radio compression/playback is not an exact science. Sometimes a track sounds great and other times it sounds crushed (again depending on the station), so I wouldn't worry too much. Radio stations only play tracks that pass their broadcasting quality test. 

Its going on the daily playlist next week I think on Total for a week....Ill try and listen again.....maybe Ill send you guys the link and you can listen and see what you think?

I just saw this.

So this is an analogue signal- and an unbalanced one?
Or is it a virtual channel from the audio interface mixer?

The signal was recorded quite low into Studio One- it was clipped before it hit that, I think.
It is pretty difficult to know exactly what has happened at the streaming stations to have it distort like that and Pete is certainly more of an expert about streaming formats than I am.

roberty

spark240 said:

Regards my internet ...Im on BT infinity plus @ around 50mbs

That's to the exchange though... if the radio station is in the US then the traffic has to come from there

andy_k

Just a few comments, 
It is possible that you should have provided mp3 version to the radio, as the WAV version will be slightly more dynamic, and will therefore hit the radio's compressor / limiters in a different way, this is all a learning experience, and there are standards which change over time.
Digital streams, whether it is from radio, or streaming services depend on the source material, your own download speed is no longer a concern, but what radio stations use for their own sources is a mystery to me.
I could imagine a station building its playlist from links to streams these days, so the format is pretty irrelevant when it's released to the world, we are at the mercy of the supplier.
According to the Loudness penalty website, not all streaming services use LUFS, although I suspect they will all do by now.
LUFS, are simply figures arrived at over the entire length of a track, simply put, it is RMS averaged over the track, so the quieter sections of audio count towards the overall score by offsetting the louder sections, it is a way to compare different genres of music fairly, and is used to determine how much loud stuff gets turned down ( by limiting), which can make louder intended mixes actually sound quieter on the service-when played back to back with other material.
It is a concern in mixing, and mastering engineers have to take it into account, everyone wants to hear stuff as loud as it can be, but that is counter productive when the streaming sites get to send it out.
Mastering is expected to be the final few percent to get the track sounding as good as it ca across many sources, and they now have to provide for various standards-more so than they used to.
This could lead to some conservative settings, but it looks like your engineer has gone for a competitive volume, there isn't really a consensus on this-it is a personal thing and we have to bow to greater experience.
In your soundcloud radio example, I heard quite a bit of distortion from just the announcer, so I wouldn't honestly judge anything on that broadcast.
The best you can do, is listen to your mix, on your system compared to other similar mixes on your system.
The more detailed your system, the more detail you will pick up, but what matters is how it compares to other similar mixes, from similar sources.
At the end of the day they will all be treated the same by the radio stations and streamers, and they will all suffer the same defects.
As long as you are getting a final mix that is what you want, all is good.

spark240

roberty said:

spark240 said:

Regards my internet ...Im on BT infinity plus @ around 50mbs

That's to the exchange though... if the radio station is in the US then the traffic has to come from there

Its a UK station..

spark240

It was played again tonight...massive improvement this time...stereo sound, hardly any noticeable distortion...I had sent them email previously so maybe they changed something?...anyhow....thanks for all the comments, Ive definitely been enlightened .

Stuckfast

Definitely don't ever upload MP3 versions for radio play or any other streaming service. What happens then is that, in effect, you are piling two layers of data compression on top of each other and it will sound ghastly. In fact in this day and age there's really no need to use MP3 at all.

brucegill

Really interesting thread. Good to hear you’ve had a good result, will be interesting to know if they did something Or used a different file etc. Wish you luck! 

Danny1969

I've had a couple of our original tracks played on BBC Radio Solent recently during lock down  and they asked for MP3's ... no ideal why as could have sent them decent files. 
As our stuff isn't mastered that hot it actually survived pretty well on the radio even when compared to the mainstream chart stuff. So if I learned anything it was don't attempt a too hot master unless your process is stella all the way through. As ours wasn't due to budget and time constraints the broadband compression used on Solent actually helped it a bit rather than distorted it. 

All in all though yours is a decent song, that's all that matters. We notice a bit of clipping but the audio has to be pretty bad for the average non muso / engineer to notice so don't worry about it 

roberty

Ah cool. Bit of a mystery then. I still suspect the bandwidth was choked the first time but it could have been something they did